The British View, Sheffield City Council

February 2017

The University of Sheffield, Sparta and Sheffield City Council are working together on the SIMPATICO project, which aims to make it easier for citizens to read, understand and act upon digital content on on Public Administration websites. This will help reduce delays and extra costs caused by misunderstanding of such content, which often lead to additional requests over the counter at council offices.

Sheffield City Council is about to start to develop its new customer website. One of the key innovations will be provided by the University of Sheffield using their expertise in machine learning and natural language processing to make the site more accessible, personalised and efficient to use. Sparta’s role is to support the technical integration and coordinate the UK team’s work on the project.

The project also uses a unique crowdsourcing engine to help users and policy makers to communicate and learn from experience to improve information access in real time. This ‘citizenpedia’ approach engages citizens and help them learn from the experience of others.

All three partners are fully committed and will work to ensure that the project is a success and that other councils can learn to improve their user experience from this groundbreaking project over the course of its 3 years.